We recognize, as we must, that the Speech or Debate Clause is a privilege that "has enabled reckless men to slander and even destroy others with impunity." But the Supreme Court has made equally clear that the Speech or Debate Clause does not "make Members of Congress supercitizens, immune from criminal responsibility." Because we cling to "the precise words" of the Court's own Speech or Debate jurisprudence and "the sense of those cases, fairly read," we conclude that Renzi's actions fall beyond the Clause's protections. We therefore deny Renzi the relief he seeks.

In June 2010, the US District Court for the District of Arizona [official website] threw out recorded conversations [Arizona Daily Sun report] of Renzi and one of his attorneys, ruling that the recordings were a violation of Article III [text] and the Fourth Amendment [text]. The court, though, ruled that the indictment would remain. When Renzi was indicted in 2008 [JURIST report], prosecutors alleged he used his position on the House Natural Resources Committee [official website] to block federal land transfer deals unless land owned by Texas real estate investor James W Sandlin was included. In exchange, Renzi allegedly received over $700,000 in payoffs. Sandlin was also indicted on charges of extortion, fraud, money-laundering and conspiracy and has since pleaded guilty.

The assassination of a prominent rights activist by law enforcement is merely the latest in the ongoing human rights issues facing the DRC. In February, a military court found Lt Col Kibibi Mutware guilty of involvement in mass rapes [JURIST report] that took place on New Year's Day and sentenced him to 20 years imprisonment, dismissing him from the military. In early October, Human Rights Watch called for the DRC government [JURIST report] to arrest general Bosco Ntaganda pursuant to an outstanding warrant for war crimes issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website]. Earlier that same week French authorities arrested a leader [JURIST report] of the Democratic Force for the Liberation of Rwanda for crimes committed by that group in the DRC. In October, UN peacekeeping forces and the DRC government arrested Mai Mai Cheka [JURIST report] for allegedly leading a rebel group responsible for mass rapes in the country.

There have been numerous allegations of war crimes and human rights violations over the Libyan revolt which has persisted since February. Last week, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) [official website] decided to extend a mandate to an investigative panel instructing it to continue its investigation of human rights abuses in Libya, after it published a 92-page report [JURIST reports] earlier this month on its findings. The report said Libyan authorities have committed crimes against humanity such as acts constituting murder, imprisonment and other severe deprivations of physical liberties, torture, forced disappearances and rape "as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population with knowledge of the attack." Also this month, Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] expressed concern over the arrests of dozens of civilians by Libyan opposition authorities. HRW called on the National Transitional Council (NTC), the opposition ruling body in Libya with de facto control over eastern Libya, to provide civilian detainees with full due process rights, access to counsel and the ability to challenge their detention before independent judicial authorities.

Westergaard's 2005 picture of the Muhammad was one of a series of caricatures published by a Danish newspaper that infuriated Muslims around the world. Many Muslims consider depictions of Muhammad offensive, and when other newspapers reprinted the caricatures in 2006 it triggered violence in several countries, leading to multiple deaths, the burning of Danish embassy buildings [JURIST reports] and boycotts of Danish goods. In April, a Dutch court acquitted [JURIST report] the Arab European League (AEL) on charges of making discriminatory and defamatory statements against Jews when they posted a cartoon on their website that insinuated that the Holocaust was fabricated. The AEL argued that they posted the cartoon in response to what they saw as a double standard in the distribution of Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad even though they did not actually deny the historical facts of the Holocaust.

The Ivory Coast announced earlier this month it would establish its own commission [JURIST report] to investigate alleged crimes committed as a result of the disputed presidential elections. This investigation may take up to two years [Reuters report]. Also, an official for the UN's International Commission of Inquiry called for an investigation [JURIST report] into Ouattara and his forces' continuing attacks against supporters of Gbagbo earlier this month. In April, Human Rights Watch [advocacy website] urged Ouattara to conduct an investigation [JURIST report] into alleged atrocities carried out by his forces in its attempts to secure the presidency. According to the report, the pro-Ouattara forces, known as the Republican Forces of the Ivory Coast, killed more than 100 civilians, raped at least 20 supporters of Gbagbo and burned at least 10 villages in March. Also in April, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) [official website] reported the deaths of at least 800 civilians [JURIST report] in the Ivory Coast town of Duekoue as a result of intercommunal violence.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her concurring opinion, argued that courts do not necessarily factor in sentencing guidelines when determining whether to implement a plea agreement. However, when a court "expressly" or "evidently" relies on the sentencing guidelines, as in Freeman's case, defendants should be permitted to move for a reduced sentence. Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas, dissented, agreeing with Stomayor's controlling opinion and suggestion that courts do not accept plea agreements "based on" sentencing guidelines, but disagreed with Sotomayor and the plurality's conclusion that Freeman could petition for a reduced sentence, concluding that "parties entering a Rule 11(c)(1)(C) plea agreement must take the bitter with the sweet."

The capacity of technology to find and publish personal information, including records required by the government, presents serious and unresolved issues with respect to personal privacy and the dignity it seeks to secure. In considering how to protect those interests, however, the State cannot engage in content-based discrimination to advance its own side of a debate. If Vermont's statute provided that prescriber-identifying information could not be sold or disclosed except in narrow circumstances then the State might have a stronger position. Here, however, the State gives possessors of the information broad discretion and wide latitude in disclosing the information, while at the same time restricting the information's use by some speakers and for some purposes, even while the State itself can use the information to counter the speech it seeks to suppress. Privacy is a concept too integral to the person and a right too essential to freedom to allow its manipulation to support just those ideas the government prefers.

Justice Stephen Breyer dissented, writing that "this effect on expression is inextricably related to a lawful governmental effort to regulate a commercial enterprise." He rejected the Court's use of "heightened" scrutiny, including a long history of intermediate scrutiny applied when the government directly restricts commercial speech. Breyer cautioned the Court not to return to the era of Lochner v. New York, when the Court judged every individual regulation or State law that could interfere with a business' "liberty." He also characterized the harm in the case as "modest at most."

We have traditionally held defendants claiming impossibility to a demanding standard: Until today, the mere possibility of impossibility had not been enough to establish pre-emption. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) permits—and, the Court assumes, requires—generic-drug manufacturers to propose a label change to the FDA when they believe that their labels are inadequate. If it agrees that the labels are inadequate, the FDA can initiate a change to the brand-name label, triggering a corresponding change to the generic labels. Once that occurs, a generic manufacturer is in full compliance with both federal law and a state-law duty to warn. Although generic manufacturers may be able to show impossibility in some cases, petitioners, generic manufacturers of metoclopramide (Manufacturers), have shown only that they might have been unable to comply with both federal law and their state-law duties to warn respondents Gladys Mensing and Julie Demahy. This, I would hold, is insufficient to sustain their burden.

PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing was a consolidated case with Actavis Elizabeth, LLC v. Mensing and Actavis v. Demahy. In all the cases, petitioners were prescribed a brand name drug and instead received the generic version. The drugs, created to treat digestive tract disorder, sometimes caused a severe nervous system disorder with continued use. At the time, in 2001, this did not appear on the brand name label, and thus, due to FDA regulations that require generic drugs to match the brand name, did not appear on the generic label. The manufacturers claims this prevented them from creating more accurate warnings. Petitioners took the generic drug manufacturers to court, citing a higher standard in their state laws.

[T]he understanding of Rogers we here affirm "has been accepted as settled law for several decades." ... Countless judges have instructed countless juries in language drawn from Rogers. To discard or restrict the Rogers instruction now would ill serve the goals of "stability" and "predictability" that the doctrine of statutory stare decisis aims to ensure.

Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito, argued in his dissent that the majority creates a limitless standard of causation for FELA claims and that the standard adopted by the majority is akin to a "but-for" test. Roberts pointed out that the Supreme Court has previously explained that in FELA cases, "[a]bsent express language to the contrary, the elements of a FELA claim are determined by reference to the common law." Because recovery for common law negligence has always required a showing of proximate cause, the same standard should apply to FELA claims. Furthermore, the dissent contends that the majority misinterpreted the Rogers decision, which, according to Roberts, was limited to cases of contributory negligence.

Ben Ali and his wife were also charged [JURIST report] with illegal possession of drugs and weapons, but the verdict for those charges will not be announced until June 30. Ben Ali fled Tunisia to Saudi Arabia in January during protests against his 23-year autocratic rule in which his family amassed substantial wealth [Reuters report] that many Tunisians say was at their expense. Ben Ali has denied the charges against him [JURIST report] which stem mostly from allegations that he authorized the use of force against protesters during the Tunisian revolution, resulting in more than 200 deaths. The uprisings in Tunisia and ousting of Ben Ali were the beginning of similar uprisings across the Middle East also resulting in the ousting of former Egypt president Hosni Mubarak [Al Jazeera profile; JURIST news archive].

We recognize that there may be instances in which the distinction between public and private rights—at least as framed by some of our recent cases—fails to provide concrete guidance as to whether, for example, a particular agency can adjudicate legal issues under a substantive regulatory scheme. Given the extent to which this case is so markedly distinct from the agency cases discussing the public rights exception in the context of such a regime, however, we do not in this opinion express any view on how the doctrine might apply in that different context. What is plain here is that this case involves the most prototypical exercise of judicial power: the entry of a final, binding judgment by a court with broad substantive jurisdiction, on a common law cause of action, when the action neither derives from nor depends upon any agency regulatory regime. If such an exercise of judicial power may nonetheless be taken from the Article III Judiciary simply by deeming it part of some amorphous "public right," then Article III would be transformed from the guardian of individual liberty and separation of powers we have long recognized into mere wishful thinking.

The case involved deceased model Anna Nicole Smith's (Vickie Lynn Marshall) bankruptcy proceedings. The beneficiary of her late husband's estate, Pierce Marshall, attempted to collect as a creditor in her bankruptcy, claiming defamation. She filed a counterclaim for tortious interference in the gift her late husband, J. Howard Marshall, had attempted to bequeath her, to try and recover the $88 million that had been denied to her in prior estate proceedings. The US Court of the Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held [opinion, PDF] that the bankruptcy court exceeded its jurisdiction in ruling on the case. The case had returned to the Ninth Circuit after the Supreme Court's 2006 ruling in Marshall v. Marshall [Duke Law backgrounder; JURIST report] that federal courts can in some cases decide disputes which involve state probate laws.

The bill, to take effect January 1, passes just days after an Illinois appeals court ordered a lower court [JURIST report] to determine whether a similar law requiring a girl's guardians to be notified before she has an abortion should be enforced. The New Hampshire bill is the latest in a variety of abortion-related legislation this year. Last month, Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] challenging a South Dakota law requiring women to seek counseling at a pregnancy center and wait three days before obtaining an abortion. Earlier that week, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton vetoed a pair of bills [JURIST report] that restricted state funding for abortions and banned them altogether after 20 weeks. Also in May, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed a bill that requires women seeking an abortion to first get a sonogram [JURIST report]. Multiple states have acted to ban abortions after 20 weeks, when some studies suggest a fetus can begin feeling pain, including Missouri, Indiana, Alabama, Ohio, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kansas and Idaho [JURIST reports].

With the US withdrawing troops, ongoing disputes over irregularities in last September's parliamentary elections have raised doubts about the stability of the Afghan government. Last January, Karzai postponed the seating [JURIST report] of Parliament following a request by the special court for more time to look into allegations of fraud surrounding the elections. Karzai had promised [JURIST report] to have the special court review the election results in time to seat the election by the original January deadline. But the IEC claims that the special does not have legal authority to question the results that it certifies because the law says it has the final say in determining the elections results. In November, the Afghanistan Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) [official website] disqualified 21 candidates [JURST report] for electoral fraud after finding widespread voting irregularities in 12 provinces. Of the disqualified candidates, 19 had either won or were leading in their districts, seven of which were incumbents, and two were second place finishers in districts where the first place finisher was also disqualified. In October, the IEC invalidated 1.3 million votes [JURIST report], nearly a quarter of the 5.6 million votes cast nationwide, due to findings of fraud. The IEC found that the 2,543 polling stations where the votes had been cast did not follow IEC procedures.

US Courts have also been forced to interpret medical marijuana statutes in recent years. In January 2010, the California Supreme Court [official website] overturned [JURIST report] a 2003 law limiting the amount of marijuana that may be possessed under the state's Medical Marijuana Program (MMP) [materials]. Earlier that month, New Jersey became the fourteenth US state [JURIST report] to legalize medical marijuana. In November, voters in Maine approved [JURIST report] an expansion of the state's existing medical marijuana laws, making Maine the fifth state to allow dispensaries, following California, Colorado, Rhode Island and New Mexico. California's Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled in 2008 that the MMP is not in conflict with the Supremacy Clause [JURIST report] and does not violate the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) [text].

[S]uspect, as a politician, made the remarks that through his eyes, there are evil aspects of Islam and the Koran. When the alleged statements ... are viewed, both the wording and in conjunction with other statements, most of these statements that can only be seen as on Islam and the Koran. The suspect in these statements directed them against the faith and not against people (Muslims) and it can not be proven legally and convincingly that he incites hatred with these statements and/or discrimination against Muslims, as he was charged with. Regarding several statements, the court considers that these statements also include criticism of individuals, especially politicians, who in the opinion of the accused, do not recognize evil aspects of Islam. These (parts of) the statements can not therefore also be brought under incitement to hatred or discrimination against people because of their religion.

The original parties are planning to sue the Netherlands in an international court [NRC report] in reaction to the verdict. Reactions from Dutch figures has been mixed [NRC report], with equal amounts praising the decision as a victory for free speech and decrying the legitimization of hate speech. The Wilders case was analyzed by Gerolf Hagens [Teamleider, Kaveity and Kaveity] in Geert Wilders trial explores new frontiers of Dutch politics, society and jurisprudence [JURIST op-ed].

In May, the court rejected claims by Wilders [JURIST report] that the hate speech charges [prosecution materials, in Dutch] against him should be dropped over claims of bias. Wilders claimed that one of the judges had tried to convince [AFP report] the defense's expert witness to support the claims at a 2010 dinner party. While the court allowed prosecution to continue for any statements Wilders made likening Islam to Nazism, it dropped a complaint against him for referring to the Koran itself as "fascist," holding that prosecutors were precluded from including statements comparing Islam to fascism alone. In March, an Amsterdam court rejected Wilders' claims of improper venue, ruling that the Amsterdam court has the authority to judge the case, given that the alleged statements were committed within its jurisdiction. In February, the court granted Wilders the right to set out the objections [BBC report] he had made during the initial trial, which was postponed following the dismissal of the original panel of judges [JURIST report] amidst allegations of bias. Prior to their dismissal, the original panel members heard the prosecution's case, which culminated in a request that Wilders be acquitted on all charges [JURIST report]. The prosecutors based their request on determinations that the politician's statements were directed at Islam and not Muslims themselves and additionally, that the evidence failed to establish that he intended to incite violence. The presentment of the prosecution's case followed an order from a panel of Dutch judges to resume the trial after initially rejecting claims of judicial bias [JURIST report]. The trial had previously been suspended [JURIST report] after a lawyer representing Wilders accused one of the judges of making a statement which cast him in an unfavorable light to the jury.

The alleged coup plot highlights the continuing power struggle between Turkey's ruling Justice Development Party (AKP) [party website, in Turkish] and the country's secular nationalist establishment, the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) [official website, in Turkish]. Turkish police detained more than 40 people in connection with the plot in February 2010 and continued to bring charges against alleged perpetrators, but released three high ranking military officials [JURIST reports] just days later. The "Sledgehammer" plot is similar to the Ergenekon [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive] conspiracy, in which the secular group is suspected of planning to overthrow [JURIST report] the AKP. The Ergenekon group is also alleged to be involved in bombings, political assassination plots and the death of journalist Hrant Dink [BBC obituary]. The probe into the Ergenekon conspiracy has been criticized as an attempt by the AKP to silence opposition and further its imposition of Islamic principles [DPA report; JURIST report] in violation of Turkey's secular constitution [text]. Trials against the Ergenekon group [JURIST report] opened over two years ago with more than 200 suspects in custody. The suspects include journalists, academics, army officers, policemen and Turkish Workers' Party [party website, in Turkish] leader Dogu Perincek [JURIST report].

Similar cases regarding the constitutionality of PPACA are being heard in federal courts across the nation. Earlier this month, the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit [official website] heard arguments [JURIST report] regarding the constitutionality of the individual mandate. The appeal was brought by the Deparment of Justice (DOJ) after the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida [official website] struck down the entire health care law after it determined that the individual mandate exceeds Congress' authority [JURIST report] under the Commerce Clause. Also this month, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit [official website] heard arguments [JURIST report] in a similar challenge to the constitutionality of the individual mandate brought by the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) [advocacy website]. The appeal stems from a ruling upholding [JURIST report] PPACA and the contested requirement. Also this month, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit [official website] decided it can rule on two challenges to PPACA after the court requested briefs [JURIST report] from all parties on whether the Anti-Injunction Act (AIA) [text], which prevents injunctions against taxes before the tax is imposed, would bar review of PPACA until it is implemented. The Fourth Circuit already heard arguments [JURIST report] in May to resolve a split decision between the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruling against the individual mandate and the Western District of Virginia dismissing a challenge [JURIST reports].

This is yet another sign of the systematic injustices that make up Florida's death penalty system—which is already plagued by wrongful convictions, racial inequities, the highest rate of exonerations and inadequate legal representation. ... It is past time to end state-sponsored executions and replace the unfair, unjust, and unconstitutional death penalty system with mandatory life in prison.

The death penalty remains a controversial issue worldwide. In March, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn [official website] signed Senate Bill 3539 [text] into law, which abolished the death penalty [JURIST report] in the state. The law is set to take effect on July 1. According to an Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] report [text, PDF; JURIST report], the number of countries using the death penalty dropped in 2009, but more than 700 people were executed in 18 countries, with the most executions carried out in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the US. Last August, the US District Court for the Southern District of Georgia [official website] heard a habeas petition from Troy Davis, who was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering an off-duty Savannah, Georgia police officer. In a rare move, the federal court heard the habeas petition after Davis had exhausted his state remedies under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act [text], but the court sided against Davis saying that he failed to prove his innocence. Law Offices of the Southern Center for Human Rights [official website] Executive Director Sarah Totonchi argues [JURIST commentary] said that "Troy Davis' case illustrates that US courts simply cannot provide the certainty necessary to impose an irreversible punishment; therefore the death penalty must be abolished."